Narcissism
Narcissism seems to have had a lot of survival value in the specie's history. I mean in one sense all of humanity's social problems result from narcissism (i.e. from doing the wrong thing for narcissistic supply). Everyone is narcissistic, just not pathologically so. It's the relatively pathological narcissism that many of our social problems stem from. None of us are entirely free of it (except the traditions argue, the Buddhas, Jesus, Patañjali, and such figures; saints, arhats, etc), but those who cross a certain boundary on the spectrum get called frequently or by those who have insight—narcissistic—if not diagnosed as such. The difference between normal narcissism/self-esteem is in the source of it, how you get it; i.e. if you get your narcissistic supply mostly dysfunctionally/pathologically as opposed to normally, e.g. through art/creativity or being a good person in the latter case. Narcissism operates in everyone, but has very different manifestations. Often called a malignant type of self-love, it was recently reported that self-hating Narcissists don't feel self-love when looking in the mirror. Narcissist's chief tendency is to avoid cause, and thus blame. See: Narcissistic ego defense. « Modell (1975) has described what he believes is the telltale narcissistic ego defense: a massive block against affective experience. This block against affect is empowered or motivated by a fear of closeness to the object and helps create and perpetuate an illusion of self-sufficiency. Disavowal may be understood as a defense that encompasses the blocking of affect, because it is the emotional significance of closeness that must be avoided in order to preempt fantasized humiliations and sustain grandiose illusions. » Narcissistic disorder "of specific importance for the development of NPD are inherited variations in hypersensitivity, strong aggressive drive, low anxiety or frustration tolerance, and defects in affect regulation (Schore, 1994)." "Parents normally help their children to develop realistic self- esteem and to modulate and neutralize grandiosity, narcissistic distress, and excitement. However, inconsistent attunement and insufficient attachment can lead to failure in the development of functioning self-esteem and affect regulation. Schore (1994) suggested in his extensive and integrative work on biopsychological origins of affect regulation that the affective attunement between caregiver and child creates neurobiologically mediated emotional response patterns." "Schore also suggested that the patient with either NPD or BPD does not have access to symbolic representation that can perform the important self-soothing, reparative functions encoded in evocative memory. They can not execute a reciprocal mode of autonomic control, and their ability to autoregulate affect are fundamentally impaired (p. 429). Schore believed that NPD and BPD represent different patterns of misattunements that contribute to their different characterological functioning." "Based on reviews of studies of attachment patterns, Schore (1994) identified two types of caregiver-child patterns that may lead to the development of NPD. An insecure- resistant attachment contributes to a state of hyperactivation and affect underregulation, resulting in overt grandiosity, entitlement, and aggressive reactions to others. A depressed-hypoarousing attachment contributes to low energy and affect overregulation, leading to inhibition, shyness, predominant shame, and hidden grandiose strivings (pp. 426-427)." "When the child is in a negative high state of arousal (e.g., aggressive separation protest), the caregiver fails to modulate the child or can even overstimulate the child into a state of dyscontrol. When the child is in a low-arousal shame/depressed state, the caregiver can not attune either to himself or herself or to the child to help the child out of this state. Overall, the caregiver is ineffective in regulating the child out of a low-arousal shame state and in offering limit setting in high-arousal states. As a result, the pre-NPD child does not develop the autonomic control and ability to neutralize grandiosity, regulate excitement, and modulate narcissistic distress." "When affect mirroring is appropriately marked but is noncontingent, in that the infant's emotion is misperceived by the caregiver, the baby will still feel the mirrored affect display to map onto his primary emotion state. However, as this mirrored state is incongruent with the infant's actual feelings, the secondary representation created will be distorted. The infant will mislabel the primary, constitutional emotional state. The self-representation will not have strong ties to the underlying emotional state. The individual may convey an impression of reality, but as the constitutional state has not been recognized by the caregiver, the self will feel empty because it reflects the activation of secondary representations of affects that lack the corresponding connections within the constitutional self. Only when psychotherapy generates mentalized affectivity will this fault line in the psychological self be bridged. (Fonagy et al., 2002, pp. 10-11)" Rhizomata * Psychology * Female Narcissism; Male Narcissism * Psychopathology